President Muhammadu Buhari says his administration will not privatise healthcare institutions in order not to exclude the poor and the vulnerable from accessing healthcare services.
The president said this at the Aso Rock Presidential Villa in Abuja yesterday while receiving a team led by Professor Olu Akinkugbe and constituted by the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library to develop an agenda for the health sector in the country.
Buhari stated: “Privatisation aims at maximum profit. It then excludes the poor and the vulnerable from accessing healthcare. But we have to look after the poor.”
Buhari stressed the need to be careful and take a look at the state of development of the country before considering the option of privatising healthcare institutions.
The president recalled that the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) which he headed in the 1990s had developed institutional strengthening in which the PTF supported pharmaceutical companies with resources to encourage local production of drugs.
Earlier, Akinkugbe said the team’s agenda for the health sector include proposals on healthcare financing, developing health intelligence/observatory to pre-empt epidemics, simultaneous focus on primary, secondary and tertiary healthcare, preventing labour unrests in the health sector, facilitating access to essential drugs through local production and the drug distribution system.
